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The joy of wellbeing – naturally

self awareness

According
to some, having been raised an Irish Catholic, I should practically have a PhD
in guilt! Seriously though, seeing the
effect that it has on people’s lives, I do ponder this feeling, and its
consequences, from time to time.

Recently
I’ve been thinking about how strongly it relates to shame. For most of us, this is something that we
learn at a very early age. This means
that it’s acquired during the phase of our lives (0 – approximately 6 years of
age) when we accept things without question, and without the ability to judge
their validity or helpfulness. As a
result, shame is something that is very longstanding, deep rooted and can have
a profound impact on our lives. It is
also – as alluded to in my, slightly flippant, comment above – often embedded
into our culture, helping to perpetuate and strengthen its hold on us.

So,
is it healthy, and does it serve any useful purpose?

If
I can address the second part of that question first, I believe that guilt is
only useful in as much as it alerts us to discomfort. It shows that there is an issue that needs
addressing.

When
we experience discomfort in this way, it indicates that our thoughts are out of
line with our Higher Self’s views on the subject. For example, if I do something that makes me
feel guilty, my inner critic is telling me all those self-shaming thoughts,
such as:

You’re a bad person!

You never get anything right!

You’ve failed again!

What a stupid mistake that was!

In
contrast, our Higher Self never judges us, and certainly would never
address us in less than loving terms.

So,
our discomfort makes us aware that we’re out of alignment. We’re not being true to our Higher Self.

If
we drill deeper, we’ll probably find it’s not just the shaming thoughts that
are off balance, they’re most likely coming from our deeper awareness that we’re
not living as our Best Self – we’ve allowed ourselves to be distracted by other
things.

In
today’s world we’re spoilt for choice on ‘distractions’:

Social media

‘Will we / won’t we’ Brexit?

And, whichever way it goes, what impact will this have on the economy?

Has environmental damage gone beyond repair?

Then,
of course, there’re also the ‘minutiae’ of our everyday lives:

What to have for dinner

Who will get together with whom on Love Island?

What are people thinking of me / of what I said / of how I look?

All
of these things can occupy our thoughts, meaning that we’re not fully
present much of the time.

As
a result, we often act, or make decisions, on a largely subconscious
level. We can end up going through our
days on autopilot, reacting rather than consciously responding to situations,
allowing the nervous, anxious, fearful part of our mind to make our decisions
for us. This can result in things like:

Over eating

Over spending

Not stepping out of our comfort zone – eg trying something new

Avoiding situations that we find challenging – eg meeting new
people

Self sabotage

When
we notice that we’ve made decisions that were unwise, and maybe got us into
trouble, we then feel guilty. This isn’t
‘wrong’ or ‘bad’ – no feelings are, and it’s impossible to turn them off anyway
– it’s what we do with this feeling that’s important.

Do
we get ‘stuck’, listening to, and engaging with those shaming thoughts?

Or
do we explore the feelings and learn from them, seeing what changes we can make
to move closer into alignment with Who We Really Are, in order to live a life
where we make conscious choices that serve us, and that feel authentic
and honest, and where we can be responsible and accountable rather than feeling
guilt and shame?

This
can be challenging, and will require us to look deeply at conditioning that we’ve
carried since childhood. Others have
referred to this as ‘un-domestication’ or ‘rewilding’. It’s a visceral process and requires
deconstruction and reconstruction, but you don’t have to do it alone, and the
rewards feel amazing: self awareness, autonomy and freedom.

I
think that this is the only value of guilt and therefore I don’t feel that it’s
a place where we should spend any more time than absolutely necessary. In fact, to return to the question of ‘is it
healthy?’, generally, beyond the initial recognition and finding the issues to
be addressed, I would say that the answer to this is ‘No’.

On
the contrary, guilt is often very restricting and deeply uncomfortable. It keeps us small and can be very stressful
which, as we know, impacts on our wellbeing.
That inner voice also isn’t content with just criticising our current
choices. If we are prepared to listen, it
has a nasty habit of dragging up every perceived failing and every ‘mistake’ we’ve
ever made. It also projects its beliefs
onto others, telling us that they, too, see us as not good / clever / skilled
enough.

So,
what can we do?

Start
by taking a step back and observe the things that your mind is telling you,
without engaging with them, knowing that they are merely the product of your
conditioning and your natural negative bias.
Don’t try to fight your mind, it’s just doing its job, and it’s not
really open to persuasion anyway!
Observe, without judging, and accept that this is what the mind does –
not just yours, but everyone’s.

You
can then make a conscious decision about whether to go along with what your
mind says, or choose a different option.
You don’t have to push yourself too far out of your comfort zone. Small steps and small challenges will help
you to build your ‘consciousness muscles’ allowing you to stretch and grow.

As
you become more self-aware you will be able to identify the things you
really want in your life, the things that light you up and fill you with
excitement and joy. These are your guide
in creating the fulfilling life that you long for. These are where you discover your ‘purpose’. You aren’t here for the ‘should’s, ‘have
to’s or ‘ought to’s. You’re
here to Be Who You Really Are and to let that light shine out. You’re here to experience and grow and en-joy
the journey.

I
was recently having a discussion with a small group of friends and the term ‘self-compassion’
came up. One member of the group was
unfamiliar with this word which made me wonder how many others are in the same
situation? It’s a fairly self-explanatory
concept, and one that’s very common in my field of work, but perhaps it’s
incorrect for me to assume that it’s part of everyone’s vocabulary. And if you haven’t come across it in any
specific sense, is it something that you would consciously apply in your life? I therefore thought that I would post
something to make self-compassion more explicit and also maybe to say what my
thoughts are on what it is, and what it is not.

To
start with, I thought I’d look at some definitions. Compassion itself can be defined as:

“a strong feeling of sympathy and sadness for
the suffering or bad luck of others and a wish to help them”

According
to vocabulary.com Compassion “is a word for a very positive emotion that has to
do with being thoughtful and decent… When you feel compassion for someone, you
really want to help out.” https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/compassion

Self-compassion then, is when we show these feelings towards
ourselves. If we’re experiencing feelings
of inadequacy, failure or suffering of any kind, instead of being critical of
ourselves – a very common response – we can choose to be warm, understanding,
sensitive, gentle, considerate and kind.

So
why, you might ask, would we want to do this, and isn’t it a form of selfishness
and self-indulgence? If I’ve done
something wrong / foolish, don’t I deserve to feel guilty / stupid?

Well,
firstly I would say that if any – even small – part of you resonated with that
last sentence, I would like to gently invite you to notice your self-talk. Using labels like ‘wrong’, ‘foolish’ and ‘stupid’,
I believe, is unhelpful. They put us
into a state of shame which is deeply uncomfortable and only adds to our emotional
suffering at a time when we’re already feeling pretty lousy.

I
also think that there is very little to be gained from feeling guilty, other
than to notice the emotion and to learn from it, by which I mean to observe the
discomfort and to explore what triggered it and what wisdom that holds for you
about who you really are and the choices that you make, so that you can make
choices that are more authentic for you in the future. Beyond that, I feel that guilt serves only to
make us feel bad, and how can we be our best selves from that place?

In
fact, if we don’t do this, we can end up experiencing burnout and ‘compassion
fatigue’. This is basically when we’ve
exhausted our inner resources, leaving ourselves ‘running on empty’. This is not sustainable and can result in
becoming ill and unable to function fully for a time, until we can rest and
recharge. If we’ve allowed ourselves to
reach a very low point, this recovery could even take years… so much better to learn how to look after
ourselves now.

Also,
a phrase that really hit me a few years ago when I was pushing myself too hard
and not taking time to replenish my resources, was:

How
then do you recognise if you’re experiencing compassion fatigue? According to goodtherapy.org the main
symptoms include:

If
you would like to explore self-compassion further, please get in touch. I offer bespoke wellbeing packages which address
this, and I also run workshops helping you to develop self-awareness and learn
strategies for self-support.